Monster: Made & Broken (A Mafia Bad Boy Romance) (20 page)

Evelyn.

I stared at her through the haze, at her worried face with the soft lips and her full figure. Everything about her was warmth and light, and I needed her more than the air I breathed.

She made a squeaky little noise of surprise when I got to my feet and grabbed her face between my palms, but it was swallowed by the heated kiss I pressed to her lips. Sparks of elation and need fired from where our lips met all the way down through my body to my cock, already stiff and heavy between my legs. I ripped my lips from hers and pressed my mouth to her throat, moaning with the taste of her warm skin. My hands slid down her body and
tore
, and then the warm, full softness of her breasts spilled into my palms.

Yes.

“
Marcus—
oh.”
Her voice broke off in a soft moan when I buried my mouth in the full globes, a nipple slipping in between my lips as if seeking the warmth of my tongue of its own accord. When I suckled deeply, she cried out and buried her hands in my hair.

There was nothing in the world but her. Nothing but her body and the overwhelming need to drown my darkness in her light until all the anger and all the horror went away, like it always did in her embrace.

Still with my lips around her swollen nipple, I fumbled for the opening to her pants. They gave with a ripping sound, and a shudder went through her when my fingers slipped in between her thighs, seeking entry to the core of her being. The core of her light.

“
Marcus, stop,” she breathed, her voice hitching a little when I switched to her other breast, sucking the nipple into my mouth with the same desperation as my hand pressed up between her legs. “We can’t do this now.”

I moaned against her breast, the sound as broken as my mind. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t, or the darkness would consume me again until there was nothing but a shell left. But I couldn’t hurt her, either.

I forced my mouth from her breasts and pressed my face in against her neck, breathing heavily from the sheer force it took to obey. Her scent—of honey and woman and
Evelyn
—
filled my nostrils and fanned my desire to the point of physical pain. “I need you. Please, Evelyn. I need you. It hurts so much.”

“
Oh, Marcus,” she whispered, and this time her voice was filled with pity—and love.

I kissed her because I couldn’t stop myself. Even now, even when I was less than human, less than nothing, she loved me.

Her arms wound tightly around my neck until I pulled back. Then she took my hand and moved it back down between her thighs. When my fingers found her heat, her eyes fluttered closed and she sighed softly.

Relief mixed with my need, and I groaned. She was wet. She wanted me.

I ripped her pants so I could spread her thighs apart and rubbed my palm the full length of her slit, shuddering as warm slickness coated my skin.
Yes,
this was it. This was what my entire being yearned for—had yearned for since the first time the monster appeared.
Evelyn.

She yelped when I spun her around and pressed her up against the wall, but she didn’t resist. Only arched her hips backward, inviting me in.

Yes, yes, yes!

I ripped my jeans in my desperation to get to her, and then there was nothing between us, nothing to stop me from finding what I longed for so desperately.

Evelyn’s cry was sharp when I seated myself in her tight heat, but the rush of blood in my ears blocked it out as her soft flesh clenched around me.

“
God!”
I roared as every cell in my body burned with completion. This was it—this was how it was meant to be, how I could finally find my soul again. Inside my beloved, inside her light.

I grabbed her hips and pulled almost all the way out before my need for her forced me back in. And again. The sharp spikes of pleasure every time I bottomed out in her nearly tore my mind apart, but it was a blissful sort of insanity. All I wanted was to lose myself in her until all that remained of me was the part of my heart she had saved.

“
Evelyn. I love you. I love you.”

I took her without thought for anything but the relief of finally being with the woman who was meant to be mine, my gasped confessions of love accentuated by her responding cries and the wet sounds of her sex swallowing my cock.

When I finally came inside of her, filling her with my essence in pulsing spurts, it was as if she drained the darkness from my mind as well.

For a long, blissful time, there was nothing but the perfect feeling of her soft body in my arms and her still-quivering pussy around my slowly deflating cock. Nothing but peace and light as my sanity slowly returned and the monster disappeared back to the depths.

It lasted until I opened my eyes and saw the woman I loved pressed up against the dank basement wall beneath me, her body shaking with her silent tears.

* * * *

Chapter 21

Marcus

My heart pounded in my chest, but it was an oddly dull sensation. Like it was muted by the sense of falling, of the walls closing in around me.

I had hurt her.
Hurt
her. My Evelyn.

Slowly, moving as gently as I could, I pulled out of her.

She groaned when my cock slipped from her swollen entrance, and the sound cut through the numbness like a knife.

I'd been wrong. All these years, I had been so wrong. There wasn't a monster living in my chest, taking over my conscience when the darkness closed in.

I
was the monster. All the time. With every fiber of my being.

I hurt her.

She remained leaning against the wall, her sides still moving rapidly from her gasps for air.

I knelt down behind her and slid my hands in between her folds, opening her up again. Everything in my brain screamed at me to get away from her, to never touch her again, but I couldn't do that--I had to make sure I hadn't caused any serious damage to her body. I had to know there wasn't any internal bruising. Or bleeding.

Her soft little sex was swollen and flushed red, but only my semen dripped out of her still quivering channel when I opened her. The proof of our coupling made a trickle of desire travel down my spine, and my cock give a half-hearted attempt at rising again.

"What are you doing?" she murmured, her voice drugged and hoarse. Had she been screaming while I took her? Had she screamed at me to stop?

The wave of nausea in my stomach intensified, making my cock fall again. I let go of her slick folds and got to my feet again, looking around for something to cover her with. I'd ruined her clothes in my desperation to get inside of her, and she didn't need to suffer the indignity of being dragged through the house for everyone to see what she had been put through. In my hands.

There was nothing but broken body parts, blood and the splintered leftovers of the chair our attacker had sat on in the small cell.

I unbuttoned my own shirt, the only piece of either of our clothing that had made it through somewhat unscathed and held it out to her.

Evelyn wrinkled her nose at the blood spatters on the fabric, but she took it anyway. She was so small compared to me it came down well past her mid thighs.

"Come," I said to her when she gave me a careful look, as if she didn't know what to do now. "I will take you up to Mira. You'll be safe with her."

Evelyn grimaced, her eyes darting to the floor between us and the door. Some of the blood had formed a pool in front of it.

Of course she didn't want to walk through a man's fresh blood.

Without a word I reached out and lifted her up, biting back a groan when my wounds gave sharp shocks of pain. I had undoubtedly burst more than a few stitches when I killed Brigs' man, and fucking Evelyn like a beast likely hadn't helped.

I relished the pain as I stepped over the blood with Evelyn in my arms. I deserved pain—and so much more.

I hurt her.

I bit down on the wave of despair and self-loathing that washed over me as I made my way out of the basement and up the stairs with the woman who should have been my bride in my arms.

The door to the room Evelyn shared with Mira was open, and I could hear Blaine's quiet voice from within. Rob was nowhere to be seen, but he didn't need to be there as long as Blaine was present. My older brother would never in a million years let anything happen to his little family. Nor would he hurt them himself.

Both Mira and Blaine looked up when I stepped through the door, both with a look of mild concern on their faces.

"You all right, love?" Blaine asked.

"Oh. Yeah," Evelyn said. A faint blush touched her cheeks when she realized we had company, and shame ate at my gut. She shouldn't have to bear the humiliation of others knowing what I'd done to her, but I didn't have any other choice. I put her down next to the bed and turned to Blaine.

"Can I speak with you?"

"Sure," he said, giving Evelyn another glance before he followed me outside the room, closing the door behind him.

"I need a favor," I said, not letting him ask any of the questions I could see written across his face. "You said you had an out for Mira and Aidan?"

Blaine nodded once. "I do."

"I need Evelyn out of here. Tonight. For good. Can I count on you?"

He sighed and ran his fingers through his black hair. "You know neither I nor the twins will ever repeat what he said about her. She's safe here."

"Can I count on you?" I repeated, my voice tight from the tension in my body.

"What happened, Marcus?" he said, folding his arms across his chest. "Is it because she saw you... ah,
hulking out?"

"I
hurt
her!" It wasn't quite a shout, but the sound of my shame spoken out loud still seemed to echo through my head until it filled the air. I buried my face in my hands and slumped against the wall, my muscles finally giving up their ability to keep me upright. "I hurt her, and she needs to get far, far away from me and all this shit so no one can ever harm her again. Especially me."

"Marcus..." Blaine sounded more than a little hesitant at my confession, but he gripped my shoulder and gave it what would have been a comforting squeeze had I had the ability to feel anything but pain and regret. "Are you sure you actually
hurt
-hurt her? She looks fine—or as fine as anyone can look after having walked in on one of your little massacres. And..." He sighed, and I could practically hear him steeling himself to force the words out. "Look, I know falling in love is... it's fucking brutal. Trust me, I get it. But mate, that girl stayed with you every minute of every day you were in the hospital. She switched sides for you, risking Brigs’ wrath. We get one chance at true love.
One.
And the way you two look at each other... I'm pretty sure she's it for you. Do you really want to give up on her? Because if I use my connections to make her disappear—she's gone. For good. There won't be any second chances."

Another kind of pain made it through the fog of self-hatred, making my resolve flicker for a single moment. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I gave up Evelyn I would give up the only tie I’d ever found to my humanity. She was the only one who had ever been capable of making the darkness resign, the only one to pull me out of the depths of my black insanity.

Losing her would finally break my weak grasp on the parts of my soul I could ever have called good.

But there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t sacrifice for Evelyn. Even my own soul.

“
I’m sure,” I said, pushing down the cry of denial threatening to escape my throat. “She deserves to find love with someone who isn’t a monster.”

* * * *

Chapter 22

Evelyn

"Are you all right?"

I looked up at Mira from my perch on the bed, not entirely sure how to answer her well-meaning question.

Specifically because my entire body was still throbbing from sexual exertion, and here I was, sitting half-naked in the company of a woman I'd seen only once before. I clutched Marcus' shirt tighter around my body and tried my best to suppress my embarrassed flush.

"Yeah. Thanks. Just a little..." Sweaty? Sticky? Still emotionally wrought from the intimate bond I'd shared with the man who'd dumped me with his sister-in-law minutes after the most intense sex of my life? There just really wasn't any way to finish that sentence, so I didn't even try.

"Ah, the Steel men," Mira said lightly as she walked over to the big, wooden wardrobe and began pulling out clothes. "Very intense. Not very good at easing a girl down to Earth after. Do you like navy blue? I think we're roughly the same size, aren't we?"

I looked at the simple, but elegant dress she was holding out and could have kissed her. "Navy blue is perfect. Thank you." To be fair, any color would have been fine if it meant I didn't have to spend the rest of my time in the Steel patriarch's house wearing Marcus' bloody shirt and ripped panties.

She smiled and handed me the dress, along with panties and gray woolen tights. "There's an en-suite if you want to freshen up a bit."